From Frederick Douglass's Paper.
DON'T COME TO ENGLAND.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS:ー
At this trying crisis with our people in the United States, every word of advice, if in the right direction, must prove beneficial.

The deep hatred to American slavery, which is known to exist in the hearts of the people of Great Britain, and the warm reception which has greeted many colored men on their arrival in England, have justly placed the English in the highest estimation of the oppressed of the United States. And now that the operation of the Fugitive Slave Law is driving them out of the country, and compelling them to seek homes out of the United States, it is not strange that many should look to old England, as a place of refuge. And already hundreds have landed on these shores; every week shows an increased number of fugitive slaves in the streets of London.
This being the fact, I think it no more than right that some one, on this side of the Atlantic, should frankly tell our people what condition they will be in on reaching England. The political commotions of Europe have caused many persons to seek an asylum in England, and consequently there are thousands here who are without any employment whatever.
These people have, or seem to have, the same claim upon the benevolent of the country, that the slave has who escapes from the Potomac or the Mississippi.
The refugees from the continent have, to a great extent, the advantage of our people. Most of them are educated, and have trades by which they can get a living. But not so with the American slave. He comes here, from the land of his nativity, where he has been denied an education, and with but few exceptions, they have no trades, and even those who have, do not find ready employment on account of the great number of natives.
Therefore it will be seen at once, that those who come here must necessarily be subjected to many disadvantages. And too many of our fugitive brethren are of opinion that because they can tell, by the fireside, the wrongs they have suffered in the prison house of slavery, that they are prepared to take the field as lecturers. And this being the fact, there are numbers here, who have set themselves up as lecturers, and who are in fact little less than beggars.
The English are hospitable and generous, and would not see a brother-man want for bread or a night's lodging. But I would say to our fugitive brethren, if you don't want to become beggars, don't come to England. If the climate in Canada is too cold, and you must leave the States, go to the West Indies. But, by all means, don't come to England.
Yours for right and truth,
W. W. BROWNBrown, William Wells

William Wells Brown (c. 1814-84) was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky, but escaped to freedom in Ohio in 1834, taking the name Wells Brown from a Quaker man who aided his escape. After settling in Cleveland, he worked on a Lake Erie steamboat, from which he helped many fugitive slaves escape to Canada. In the 1840s he moved his family to New York, where he began lecturing for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1843-49). Brown was active in universal reform movements advocating temperance, women's rights, and prison reform. Brown studied medicine informally, but chose to remain active in reforms instead of committing to professional medical practice. In 1847, Brown published his first book, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, and moved to Boston. From 1849 to 1854 he traveled and lectured in Europe, meeting many prominent figures and publishing two more books: Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (1852) and Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first novel known to be written by an African American. After friends in England purchased his freedom in 1854, he returned to the United States to continue his work in the abolitionist, temperance, woman suffrage, and prison reform movements. He also wrote four books about African American history, including The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, which appeared in 1863 and ran through ten editions in three years. During the Civil War, Brown joined Douglass in recruiting blacks for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Lib., 12 January 1855; London Lancet, 6 December 1884; R. J. M. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers: The Lives of Six Nineteenth-Century Afro-Americans (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 45, 48, 95-96, 101-02; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 35, 42, 50-51; DAB, 3:161; DANB, 71-73. .
London, June 27, 1851.